Abe Rosenthal: Abe Rosenthal, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent who became chief editor of the New York Times and played a key role in modernising the paper, has died aged 84.
Rosenthal's career at the Times spanned 55 years, from 1944, when he began as a cub reporter, to 1999, when he retired as the writer of On My Mind, a column on the op-ed page. When he left the Times, he took his column to the New York Daily News and continued there until 2004.
In 2002, US President George Bush conferred on him the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honour.
A passionate, driven man, Rosenthal was ruthless in his pursuit of perfection as he saw it and was never entirely satisfied with his own work or that of others. He was a brilliant and visceral judge of the news and had boundless curiosity about the world. He often viewed it with a sense of outrage - at tyranny, at injustice and exploitation, and at stupidity, incompetence and "unfairness".
Abraham Michael Rosenthal was born in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario, Canada, the fifth child and only son of Harry and Sara Rosenthal. Harry Shipiatski was from Byelorussia (today's Belarus) but took the name Rosenthal from an uncle. He was a trapper and fur trader before moving the family to New York in the early 1930s, where he became a house painter. He died after falling from a scaffolding when his son was 12.
As a teenager, Rosenthal lost his four sisters to various illnesses. He contracted osteomyelitis, a bone disease, and used a cane or crutches. He regained his mobility after attending the Mayo Clinic as a charity patient.
He studied at what was then called City College of New York, worked on the school newspaper and was a stringer for the New York Herald Tribune. He became a full-time reporter in 1944 for the New York Times.
His first big break came in 1946, when he got a two-week assignment to cover the United Nations. He stayed on the beat for eight years. His first foreign assignment was India, where he was posted in 1954. He later worked in Poland and Japan, but India retained a special fascination for him. In 1958, he moved to Poland, and the next year he was expelled by the government for delving too deeply into its affairs. In 1960, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his reporting from Poland.
In 1963, Rosenthal was summoned to New York from Tokyo to become metropolitan editor. By 1969, he had become managing editor, and in 1977 he was named executive editor. For 17 years, until 1987, when he became an op-ed columnist, he was responsible for the news operation at the Times.
As a manager, Rosenthal was abrasive, self-centred and had a volcanic temper. Many found him intimidating. He advanced the careers of many journalists and derailed the careers of others. He was a constant source of friction and controversy in the Times newsroom. Admirers and critics spoke of him with equal fervour.
There was never any question about Rosenthal's impact on the Times. He insisted on good writing and sent his reporters on stories that were ignored by other publications.
He expanded coverage in every direction. The religion page, for example, became a venue for discussion of broad theological and philosophical questions rather than a summary of sermons. Reader-friendly stories and features were added and given prominent display. New emphasis was placed on covering sports and the city. The daily paper went from two sections to four. Coverage of topics such as food and the arts was expanded. At a time when many newspapers were losing readers, the Times's circulation increased and its financial health improved.
In 1971, Rosenthal played an important role in the Times's publication of the Pentagon Papers, a landmark event in the history of journalism. The papers detailed 25 years of US involvement and deception in Vietnam. The archive of several thousand pages was classified as secret, and the management of the Times expected the government to object. Rosenthal, by then the managing editor, put his credibility and career on the line by marshalling the arguments to go ahead anyway. He was supported by the publisher, the late Arthur Ochs Sulzberger.
On the second day of a planned series, the justice department went to court to block publication. There followed two weeks of litigation and an expedited appeal. In the end, a divided supreme court affirmed the First Amendment right of the newspapers to bring the information to their readers.
Rosenthal regarded his greatest contribution to the Times as his effort to keep the news report "straight". By that he meant free of bias and editorialising on the part of reporters. "I used to tell new reporters: the Times is far more flexible in writing styles than you might think, so don't button up your vest and go all stiff on us," he wrote in his farewell column for the Times. "But when it comes to the foundation - fairness - don't fool around with it, or we will come down on you."
Rosenthal gave up the executive editorship at the end of 1986 and was succeeded by Max Frankel. As a columnist, Rosenthal's subjects ranged from the evils of the drug trade - "helping make criminals and destroying young minds" - to all forms of political, ethnic and religious repression, from China and Tibet to Africa, Europe and the Americas. He had a special interest in Israel and regularly visited it.
His marriage to Ann Marie Burke Rosenthal ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 18 years; the writer Shirley Lord Rosenthal; three sons from his first marriage including Andrew Rosenthal, a New York Times deputy editorial page editor; a sister; and four grandchildren.
Abraham Michael Rosenthal, born May 2nd, 1922; died May 10th, 2006.